Abstract:
Linguistic borrowing is inevitable in any linguistic context. The Maa language has borrowed many nouns from
the English language since the two languages co-exist through its speakers. The borrowed nouns have been
adapted phonologically into the Maa sound system for correct and acceptable pronunciation. This paper aims
at deriving the phonotactic rules governing the adaptation of the English loan nouns in the Purko dialect in
Narok North Sub County. The paper majors on the borrowed English nouns as used by the Maa speakers of the
Purko dialect, this is because the noun class is the most borrowed class of words as it is used in naming of items
not found in the borrowing language. Being a study of phonological adaptation, the CV- phonology theory by
George Nick Clements and Samuel Jay Keyser (1983) is used in deriving the phonotactic rules governing the
adaptation of the loan nouns. This paper uses the qualitative approach where the descriptive and analytical
research designs are used to describe and analyze the data. The Purko loan nouns were purposively sampled
from the Purko nouns. The data was collected using introspection and key informant interview methods of data
collection. The collected data was described and analyzed using content analysis and the data presented in
tables. This paper found out that, there were phonotactic rules that governed the adaptation of the English loan
nouns. The results of this research will contribute to the studies on phonotactic rules governing the adaptation
of loan nouns between languages.
Keywords: phonotactic rules, loan nouns, Purko dialect, Maa language.
